A report on Ainu people

Although there were Japanese settlers who ruled the southern tip of the island since the 16th century, Hokkaido was considered foreign territory that was inhabited by the indigenous people of the island, known as the Ainu people.

Ming Chinese outposts in Sakhalin and the Amur river area received animal skin tribute from Ainu on Sakhalin, Uilta and Nivkh in the 15th century after the Tyr based Yongning Temple was set up along with the Nurkan (Nurgan) outposts by the Yongle emperor in 1409.

The name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu, the islands' original inhabitants: kur, meaning 'man'.

Smaller minorities were the Ainu, Ukrainians, Tatars, Yakuts and Evenks.

Ainu (アイヌ・イタㇰ, ) or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The term came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the settlers of mainland Japan from minority ethnic groups inhabiting the peripheral areas of the then Japanese Empire, including the Ainu, Emishi, Ryukyuans, Nivkh, Oroks, as well as Austronesians, Chinese, Koreans, and Micronesian peoples who were incorporated into the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century.

Depending on the context, the term ethnic Japanese (日本民族) may be limited or not to mainland Japanese people, specifically the Yamato (as opposed to Ryukyuan and Ainu people).

The Ryukyuans differ strongly from the Ainu people, which, according to the authors, is a strong evidence for the heterogeneity of the Jōmon period population.

Takeda Nobuhiro (武田 信広), also known as Kakizaki Nobuhiro (蠣崎 信廣) (1431 – 1494) was the ancestor of the Matsumae clan, and is celebrated for his role in suppressing the 1457 Ainu revolt of Koshamain.

The Okhotsk people and the later Ainu culture, a coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer people, were located around the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as in northern Japan.